Dytective, a game to detect dyslexia, sucesfully crowdfunded

I have wondered lots of times what takes someone to give money to a crowdfunding campaign. Usually, the answer is just “laughter”. Potato salads, weird amateur movies, crazy ideas, toys… And it is good, the world needs fun, lots of it. But for once, I would like to draw attention to those other campaigns, those that try to change the world through education and through video games. This is what Dytective will offer to dyslexic kids thanks to its successful Kickstarter campaign with over 400 backers.

10% of the population is dyslexic. 40% of school dropout rate is due to dyslexia. Children feel they are less smart than the other kids and just grow up with a sense of inferiority. Luz Rello, a doctor and researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, has been fighting this situation since she was a kid. Affected with dyslexia herself, she has dedicated her life to achieve an earlier diagnosis.

The problem with dyslexia is that kids try to hide it for as long as possible. The fear of receiving poor grades, being considered retarded and overall becoming the target of their classmates jokes, get them to find infinite ways of deceiving teachers and adults in general. By the time the secret is discovered, a lot of damage has been done to their self-esteem and school progress.

Luz Rello’s research has led her to the creation of Dytective, a game to achieve early detection of dyslexia in children. Linguistics, attentional tasks, artificial intelligence and machine learning all working together to change how things work. You can show your support and help Dytective go even further on Kickstarter. or visiting the web changedyslexia.org

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About Belén Gómez

Graduate in Communications, Movie Direction and finishing a degree in English Language and Literature, her multidisciplinary career includes TV and movie direction, script-writing, video games localization, game design, international project management and multi-platform video game production. Curious about everything, she divides her time between onseriousgames.com, Serious Games projects, any Assassin’s Creed title and her Mandarin Chinese lessons.